Yesterday I found this "gamer motivations" quiz, which supposedly identifies what motivates you as a gamer™ (e.g. collecting all the things, competing against others, immersion in a fantasy world, etc).
When I did the quiz, I thought a few things were off, but I couldn't really put them into words.
Here is the quiz, in case you want to try it: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/start/gamerprofile/
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But today, I found a video about the quiz, and while the video itself was not good (it was full of weird pseudoscience and bad statistics), the comments had some good insights:
- "It's the Myers Briggs test but for gamers" - I agree 100%. It has the same flaws and the same fundamental issues. However, I think it does get a small amount of credit for being focused on motivations rather than just "this is a fundamental identity truth".
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- "it's missing questions about FEELINGS and emotional responses. E.g. I play horror games to feel scared, I play cozy games to feel happy, etc" - I couldn't figure this out yesterday but I fully agree - there's no space in the quiz for gamers who are motivated by the game making them feel an emotion. And as people pointed out, that is a commonly accepted motivation for engaging with movies and shows! So why isn't it in their quiz?
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- "whether or not I like something depends on the game - e.g. with collecting all the things: in a platformer where that's the entire point? Absolutely! But in an open world game if there's 500 feathers hidden in random places and the only reward for collecting them all is an achievement? I don't care, I'm ignoring the feathers" - this is the point I noticed yesterday. It's hard to identify a single motivation when I play a variety of games for completely different reasons.
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I would argue that the idea that someone can be driven by one specific core motivation is fundamentally flawed, because even though I would say I'm someone who likes 100%ing a game, I have only ever reached 100% in a tiny proportion of the games I've played.
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The video itself showed off some stats that were somewhat interesting, like the survey found completion was the strongest motivator overall. The video then asked the question "is this because people are fundamentally motivated this way, or is it just because games are designed to encourage and reward completion specifically?" And then proceeded to.... Not answer the question.
@lizardsquid I'd imagine that it's less of a quadrant and more of a Venn diagram of motivations, and that Venn diagram looks like a blobby dartboard. Most people enjoy games for the many of the same reasons, completion compulsion, surprise discovery, community experience, pretty lights and sounds. Some but not all gamers all the time seek out fear, high-speed mettle-testing, deep narrative or tense long-term stakes. People are more like those blobby multi-axis charts than points in a plane.